"He has written for a variety of word-oriented entities, including Esquire, GQ, Fortune, Spin, Elle, Breathe , the Los Angeles Times, Cookie, Crawdaddy , the Offsprung parenting site, PoetryFoundation.org, and Entertainment Weekly."
That's Jeff Gordinier's magazine resume--a collection of titles that would make any aspiring writer pay attention.
He's been our guest all week, showing us how his magazine career led to X Saves the World, a brand new tome that explores the continuing, real-life adventures of Generation X. Today, Gordinier tells us how he shaped his career as a glossy magazine writer.
Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.
Jason Boog:
This book was conceived and completed in the magazine world. I think the world of magazine writing--especially the kind of work you do for Details and other glossy publications--is mysterious for most fledgling writers. Can you demystify magazine writing a little bit? Any advice for the aspiring magazine writer?
Jeff Gordinier:
I started out in daily newspapers — my first real jobs were at The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina (covering city politics), and at the Santa Barbara News-Press in California (covering the local arts scene). Continue reading...
My goal, even early on, was to move to New York City and write for national magazines, probably because…
(1) I devoured magazines and still do. (I subscribe to about 80 or 90 of them, no exaggeration, from Stop Smiling to Newsweek to Spin to The Atlantic Monthly to Wired to Tricycle to Time to Fast Company to Vanity Fair to New York to Los Angeles to The Believer…)
(2) Many of the writers whose work had caused me to genuflect seemed to have broken through in magazines: Joan Didion, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, Susan Orlean, John McPhee, Bill Buford, et cetera.
(3) Magazine writers seemed to have more fun.
In the end I don’t really have any advice other than this: Read. Write. Read some more. Write some more. Lather, rinse, repeat. Just keep reading and writing until you get better. Also, find out who the powerful editors are, and try to have sex with them.
Beyond that, when you allude to the “mystery” of magazines, well, you seem to be trying to pry loose the secret password, Boog, and you know that’s never going to work.
If I gave you the password, the powers that be would revoke my Dolce & Gabbana smoking jacket. And I worked hard for that silk, kiddo.
The advice for writers to read, write and read and write some more may be repeated all the time but it should be. Writing styles are developed both by what the writer reads and his/her personal voice. Reading and writing are definitely paramount.
Posted by: Kimberlee Morrison | April 3, 2008 4:56 PM | Permalink to Comment